Planned under the auspices of the Ashkenazi United
Burial Society, which had been established in 1870, the cemetery was
intended for the better-off Jews who had moved out of the East End and
settled in the more affluent north-west London. The idea was to
emulate the best of the recent great public cemeteries of the
Victorian age. In that respect, the cemetery clearly marks a time of
"increasing equality and emancipation" for the Jewish population
(Jacobs 172). Designed by the architect and philanthropist Nathan
Solomon Joseph (1834-1909), it has "the highest profile of London's
Jewish cemeteries" (Pearson 80). Many well-known and wealthy Jews were
buried here, including the so-called "Cousinhood" — that is to
say, the inter-related network of the "Anglo-Jewish aristocracy" of
this time (see Kolsky and Rawson 150), including the Rothschilds, and
people like Sir Israel Gollancz, the literary critic who had become
Professor of English Language and Literature at King's College, London
in 1903. — Jacqueline Banerjee